Murder verdict affirmed

The Supreme Judicial Court has upheld the first-degree murder conviction of Victor Young, found guilty of stabbing Waymond Pearson on Cambridge Street in Boston in 2003.

The defendant argued that the prosecutor committed misconduct by stating, “And to be honest with you, I don’t care how [the defendant] was holding the knife. I don’t care if the point was down, if the point was up; all I know [is] that the point of this knife plunged into Waymond Pearson’s body four times and then cut him an additional eight times.”

The defendant’s argument that the prosecutor’s use of “and then” erroneously referred to facts not in evidence — the order of stab wounds — “has some force,” Justice Francis X. Spina wrote for a unanimous court.

The SJC found, however, that the prosecutor’s statement did not create a substantial likelihood of a miscarriage of justice.

“The statement was brief and isolated, and more importantly, the prosecutor never argued that the order of wounds established extreme atrocity or cruelty,” Spina explained. “On the contrary, the prosecutor’s argument focused on the number of stab wounds, the suffering of the victim, and the indifference of the defendant.”